Has anyone applied for a patent or know what’s involved? Is it something you can do yourself or is it best to get someone to draw it up for you so its more watertight?

Got an idea that I want to develop but it is something that I would definitely want to protect first.

Any tips etc gratefully received.

Firstly, you can’t patent just an idea. You need to have a solution to a problem that shows an “inventive step” from what already exists, and is non-obvious and there’s no relevant prior art.

The first thing to do is to research the hell out of your solution. Look on Google Patents, use all the possible key words, read all the existing patents that are out there. Then look elsewhere, do lots of web searches for things that might relate.

If you can’t find anything at all, talk to a patent person. My dealings are done through work so they will allocate some patent experts to repeat all the searches formally. They will then write it up – you won’t be able to do this yourself, the style and language is quite specific.

This costs money (thousands if you want decent protection worldwide), as will filing an application. Once you’ve got that far the patent office will do their own searches… Expect a good twelve months to get this far.

EDIT – Bear in mind a patent is useless unless you’ve got the finances to defend it in court when someone copies your idea.

EDIT – Bear in mind a patent is useless unless you’ve got the finances to defend it in court when someone copies your idea.

This if your idea is not easy to copy (formulation/recipe for example) then you’d be better off just keeping it secret.

Your best bet is to develop it fast and be first to market and establish a name for yourself. You’d have to be bringing in some serious money to defend worldwide patents – no one does it for you, you have to find the offenders and take action yourself.

The word eludes me, but I’m pretty sure you can achieve similar protection of original solutions through another process that is much cheaper.

I’ve got few from a previous job. It was an expensive and complex process. A big part of that was trawling other patents as loads of stuff has been done already. Often not developed or just patented to stop others. As mentioned you won’t get a huge amount of protection, certainly not internationally, and if someone does infringe then you’ll need a chunk of money and time. It can be an expensive business and there may be other solutions that work better. That said for the right business it can be the right way to go and there is help out there.

I read something a long time ago that if you wrote down your idea and then posted it to yourself then it had some sort of protection. Probably bollocks or a drunken dream.

Thanks guys

So moving things on a bit. I have an idea for a tangible product. I’m 99% it hasn’t been done before otherwise it would be commonplace.

Ignoring patents, if I were to develop a prototype and show it say to company a with a view to licensing it to then and they were to clean nick the idea off me would I have other protections / remedies?

You could get them to sign some kind of agreement which they would then be in breach of. Any sensible company probably wouldn’t speak to you though. If they have had a similar idea in the past then things start to get complicated.

You’d get them to sign something before you showed them your idea. If they nick it you can take them to court – whoever has the deepest pockets wins.

You have to get the company to sign something saying they won’t nick it before you even show it to them. Some big companies won’t even let you in the door in case they think you are going to sue them for stealing your idea and the only proof they haven’t is to make sure you don’t get in the door

Not easy, is it 🙁

Patents can be expensive, go for IP as it requires less, it costs us on average £100k for a full patent across the main territories and even then it’s hard to protect, I know of companies that make more out of infringement actions than they do out of the product!!

Probably get them to sign a non disclosure agreement of joint development agreement.

go for IP

IP is a concept, not a “thing”. A patent is just one kind of IP. It sounds like a patent is the right protection in this case, but all the disadvantages are listed already. You can give yourself some protection by looking at copyright etc., depending on what you are actually talking about.

https://www.gov.uk/intellectual-property-an-overview/protect-your-intellectual-property

But as alluded to above your best option may be to just do a decent job of implementation and being first.

[Not an expert but sat through a fair few conversations/seminars about intellectual property and software (which has its own peculiar challenges when it comes to patents)]

If they nick it you can take them to court – whoever has the deepest pockets wins

This is the real problem, defending a patent in the high court will cost a seven figure sum. If you don’t have that sort of cash handy, a patent isn’t much use unless you intend to sell it on with your product to someone who has got that sort of money.

Don’t forget you mustn’t tell anyone about it before you patent it, unless they’ve signed a NDA. Any public disclosure will make a patent impossible.

Also, patents are a way of sharing ideas. That’s one reason they only last 20 years or so, and any one can copy it if they pay a license fee. Sometimes the best way to protect your idea is to keep it secret, if you can.